StuG III Ausf. G oils

An oily life

Fooling with the oil paints required patience, as they took more time to dry than the acrylics. Then again, I really enjoyed playing with them for some reason. My idea this time was to get something from my oil sets to bring more peace to the somewhat striking camo pattern I had painted.

Dot filtering

I got inspired to try out the dot filtering again, now I used three colours in two different ways. As the colours I used a yellowish one (ABT155 Light Sand), an olive green (ABT050), and ocher (ABT092). Somehow I didn't think of taking any photos of the work in progress, my apologies.

As the name suggested, I started with dots that I then blended around the hull using a thinner-damped paintbrush. Then I remembered Bob Ross' wet on wet technique, and a few "this can be done too" videos. To try that out I painted some plain thinner on some flat panels, and then dotted my oil dots on that, and blended over the wetness. This felt like an easier method. The only bigger problem on this model was the Schürzen racks that made the side armour a bit more difficult to get to.

After curing overnight the difference between that and the earlier was not huge. Next time I'd start with the sepia wash, to get the nooks and crannies jumping out better.

Glossing over

Because the Vallejo varnish wasn't stuff that wanted to go through the airbrush out of the bottle, I applied the gloss varnish with a paintbrush instead. I'd really preferred airbrushing, but I didn't want to get it stuck or waste ages with thinning ratios. Sounded like an upcoming order of something from someplace.

The pin washing with cleanup

In my excitement I didn't stop taking photos of the washing round, or its cleanup part, nor the post-curing staet. My time was limited and I prioritized the progress instead. As if taking a couple of silly photos was going to take a long time.

Again, I iterated the boltheads, panel lines, edges and shadows with a very thing Abteilung's Sepia (ABT002). After half an hour of curing time I cleaned up the biggest messes and blended them this and that way to get some variety on my surfaces and increase the general dirtiness. When that was done, I left the model inside its box in the sauna for two days to dry up. 

Dull coating

I brushed the matt varnish (AK Ultra Matt Varnish) in two sessions. Like the top view showed, it simply didn't stick everywhere. It was the same thing I grumbled about when varnishing CFJ Quatrefoil some time ago. Perhaps it was time for me to order some airbrushable varnishes, so I could stop using excessive amounts of time on this sort of work.

I didn't feel like using a third evening on the matt varnish, so maybe the next step was going to be returning some of the highlights toned down by the oils, and maybe some thin sandy or dusty layer getting applied all over the TD. Yes, that was exactly what we were going to do. Until next time, then!